piatok, augusta 14

Beauty Gueens - Libba Bray

There was something about the island that made the girls
forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer
waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting.
Hoping. They were becoming. They were.

And so our tale begins with a sudden fall from blue skies,
with screams and prayers and a camera crew bravely recording every bit of the
turbulence and drama: What a lucky break for their show! How the producers will
crow! Ratings will skyrocket!

The flight is on its way to a remote tropical paradise where
the girls will compete against one another for the title of Miss Teen Dream.
Oh, dear. Compete is a rather ugly word, isn’t it? After all, these are such
lovely girls, pure of heart and high of spirits. Let’s say that they will be
“drawing on their personal best,” and some girls will “proceed on a path of
Miss Teen Dreamdom” while others will “have the option to explore other pageant
opportunities elsewhere at an unspecified future time.” Ah. There. That’s much
better, isn’t it?

“Are you dead?” Adina asked warily. The face above her shook
from side to side, and then burst into tears. Adina relaxed, reasoning that she
had to be alive, unless the afterlife was a lot more bipolar than she’d been
led to believe.

“Dear Jesus,” Taylor started. The girls bowed their heads,
except for Adina.“Don’t you want to pray?” Mary Lou whispered.“I’m Jewish.
Not big on the Jesus.”“Oh. I didn’t know they had any Jewish people in New
Hampshire. You should make that one of your Fun Facts About Me!”Adina opened
her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Ahem. Dear Jesus,” Taylor
intoned more fervently. “We just want to thank you for gettin’ us here safe —”
There was a loud, gurgling groan. Somebody shouted,“Oh my gosh! Miss Delaware
just died!” “— for gettin’ some of us here safe,” Taylor continued. “And we
pray that, as we are fine, upstandin’, law-abidin’ girls who represent the best
of the best, you will protect us from harm and keep us safe until we are
rescued and can tell our story to People magazine. Amen.”

Two teams were organized and, after much debate, names were
chosen: The Sparkle Ponies would stay on the beach, tend to the wounded, and
try to salvage whatever they could from the wreckage. The Lost Girls would
soldier into the jungle in the hopes of finding survivors.

A napriek smrti a skaze naokolo, nestrácajú nádej.

“Ohmigosh. No food at all.” Tiara sank down on the sand as
if the full weight of their predicament had finally hit her. She blinked back
tears. And then that megawatt smile that belonged on cereal boxes across the
nation reappeared. “I am going to be so superskinny by pageant time!”

A nikto - NIKTO - im nemôže uprieť, že sa vedia prispôsobiť situácií.

“Miss Teen Dreamers, we can’t leave this body here. It will
attract predators,” Taylor said. “You mean like those guys who NetChat you and
pretend they’re a hot German pop star named Hans but who turn out to be some
old fat guy in a house in Kansas?” Tiara shook her head. “My mom was so
pissed.” “She means like tigers or bears,” Petra said. “Oh my.” Mary Lou made a
face. “What … what should we do?” Taylor thought for a minute. “Put her in the
fire.” Shanti swallowed hard. “Way harsh. I mean, it’s terrible.” “Yes, it is.
But sometimes a lady has to do what’s necessary,” Taylor said. “From Ladybird
Hope’s I’m Perfect and You Can Be, Too, Chapter Three: ‘A lady’s quick thinking
can save a bad situation.’ She was talking about putting nail polish on a
runner in your hose, but I think the same rule applies here.”

A s tým čo boli schopné zachrániť z lietadla

“That’s the Miss Teen Dream spirit. Sparkle Ponies, report:
What did y’all salvage from the plane?” The girls listed off their bounty: four
hot roller sets, two straightening irons, a few teeth-bleaching trays, five
seat cushions, three waterlogged beauty magazines, a notebook, laxatives, diet
pills, a few suitcases filled with clothes, evening gowns, a collection of
mismatched bathing suit tops and bottoms, various shoes, bags of pretzels, and
bottles of water.

I came to Miss Teen Dream via a new program for at-risk
girls that takes them from juvie to pageants, or, as I like to call it, from
one correctional facility to another.** My personal motto is: WWWWD?: What
Would Wonder Woman Do?

She knew what Mrs. Mirabov would say: “Comrade Singh, you
must train yourself to be without. Being beauty queen is like being marine,
only harder. Marines do not fight in four-inch heels.”

a zistíte, že niekde počas tých rokov sa toho naučili tony

"Look at those clouds.” Nicole nodded toward the darkening
sky.“Tropical climate. Trade winds. This place probably has a monsoon season.
We should scout out some higher ground just in case of flash floods.” Taylor
beamed. “Excellent advice, Miss Colorado. Y’all hear that? That’s real Miss
Teen Dream–thinking.” “Meteorology was another one of my extracurriculars,”

---------------------

“Well, I melted down some of our jewelry and made arrows,”
Jennifer said, holding up the thin, homemade metal shafts. Petra admired one.
“Wow. That’s cool. How’d you know how to do that?” “I took a smelting class at
the Y one time. Well, it was between that and water aerobics with my
grandmother, so I took the smelting class. It took me a few tries but I think
these turned out pretty well. And Ohio gave us some of that tree sap nail
polish to stick them to the wood. What up, O-hi-o!” Miss Ohio did a little
dance.

“You’re Indian?” Miss Arkansas brightened. “Oh my gosh, I
bought the cutest Indian beaded bag at a gift shop in the Best Western outside
Sedona.” “I’m not that kind of Indian,” Shanti said, her practiced smile never
leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was
something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial
oppression boiling up into an
I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass-in-this-pageant-and-then-take-over-all-your-beauty-out-sourcing-needs
hatred.

„Tiara ...“ Adina had lost all the steam. „What´s you
favourite color?“ Tiara’s eyes darted left and right in fear and her smile was
strained. “Um. Thank you, Fabio. I personally believe that we have a duty such
as … as Americans … to help other people who are not Americans such as the
peoples of the China and the Alaska and the freedoms we enjoy in our great
nation and such and that is my opinion which I personally believe will make us
a stronger nation. Thank you.”Adina squeezed her hands against her head. “What are you
even saying? You just made my brain die a little. You know, people, just being
beautiful isn’t enough.”Tiara looked confused. „But ... it always has been.“

A cez všetky vážne témy - kniha je NESMIERNE vtipná.

The strip of beach seemed to vanish within seconds and the
girls were calf-deep in the sea. Nicole pointed out at the horizon. “Um, does
that ocean look kind of high to you?” “How can the ocean get high? It can’t
inhale. I know a lot about it. My platform is called Don’t Do Drugs Because
They Make You Dumb,” Brittani explained.-------------------------“Poor thing,” Sosie said. “That poor thing tried to eat us,”
Jennifer said. Sosie nodded. “Poor bitch.”-----------------------------

“The first thing we really need to do is make sure we have
drinking water.” “I forgot — why can’t we just drink the ocean water?” Tiara
asked. “Because people pee in there all the time,” Brittani explained with
assurance.

---------------------

“It’s a solar hibachi,” Miss Ohio explained, serving up a
perfectly done fillet. “I used a safety razor to descale the fish, rinsed it in
a little of the freshwater, and now …” Using the handle of a hairbrush, she
scooped up the fish and dropped it onto a mound of clean rocks. “Miss New
Mexico?” Miss New Mexico took a bite and rolled her eyes in bliss. “OMG, this
is so good, I’m not even going to make myself barf it back up.” “Tiara and I
caught the fish with these!” Brittani said, brandishing a pair of straightening
irons.

----------------------- “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest. Yo, ho, ho, and a
bottle of freaking awesome!” Adina said in a loud voice. She slurred a bit so
that awesome came out more like aweshumme. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to
be an inveshtigative journalist anymore. I want to be a professional rum
drinker.” “There are people who do that,” Duff said. He’d barely sipped his
rum. “Really? What do you call them?” “Alcoholics.”

A čo by ste nepovedali, je tam aj nejaká tá akcia.

Jennifer leapt to her feet. “Holy {bleep bleep}12! Get your
{bleep}13 out of the way!” Too late, the girl looked up just as the snake
opened wide and swallowed her down in a giant gulp.
“{Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep}14!” Jennifer said many, many times.

“Ohmigosh, I LOVE that one!” Tiara said, clapping. “How
about ‘I Only Want to Be with You’ or ‘I Just Need to Be Yours’ or ‘You, You,
You’?” Nicole chimed in. “‘I Gave Up My Hobbies So I Could Spend More Time with
You.’ ‘I Love You Like a Stalker!’ Or — ooh, I know: ‘Safe Tween Crush’?” “That
one is so awesome!” Tiara began to sing. “Wanna rock you, girl, with a
butterfly tunic. / No, I’m not gay, I’m just your emo eunuch. / Gonna smile
real shy, won’t cop a feel, / ’cause I’m your virgin crush, your supersafe
deal. / Let those other guys keep sexing. / You and me, we be texting / ’bout
unicorns and rainbows and our perfect love.

Through the breaks in the dense tree line, Taylor glimpsed
men behind a barbed wire fence carrying guns. Their work boots and crew cuts
said military to her, but they had no familiar identifying markers — no berets,
no camouflage or flag emblems. Instead, they all wore the same black shirts, though
one had pinned a Daffy Duck emblem on the back. It was odd. And unsettling.
Taylor’s instincts, honed during countless pageants when the one who claimed to
be sweet was the one to put Nair in your shampoo, came crawling up her spine
and into her cortex. She hid herself.

LADYBIRD HOPE: Barry, let me give you a history lesson,
Ladybird Hope-style. When the Vietnamese got kids hooked on drugs and we had to
fight a war to stop it, did we give in? BARRY REX: Uh … LADYBIRD HOPE: No! We
said “Crack is wack!” and we made sure everybody could have guns instead of
drugs. And that’s the reason we fought World War II, and why we keep fighting,
because those freedom-hating people out there want to take away our right to be
rich and good-lookin’ and have gated communities and designer sweatpants like
the ones from my Ladybird Hope Don’t Sweat It line, and they want us all to
learn to speak Muslim and let the lawyers stop us from teaching about Adam and
Eve and that will be the day that every child gets left behind.

V tejt knihe je toľko patriotismu a toľko sebairónie na patriotizmus!

At Breast in Show, you can also scale down your imperfect
earlobes, inject fat into your thinning gums, slim the area around your knees
and ankles — anything you like to make you look just like me and all the other
girls you see on TV, in movies, and in magazines. And our trained aestheticians
can help you identify parts of yourself you didn’t even know could be improved.
Why wait? Schedule your appointment today. Financing is available. There’s even
a drive-through, so you can get right back to your busy life. Breast in Show.
Because “You’re perfect just the way you are” is what your guidance counselor
says. And she’s an alcoholic.

A to mi ani nedovoľte začať na tie útržky od ChaCha.

MoMo B. ChaCha was not happy. His favorite pajamas were not
yet back from the cleaners. When MoMo was unhappy everyone was unhappy. With a
sigh, he settled on a pair of cotton pj’s. In the morning, he would have the
cleaners assassinated.

MOM It’s more than that, sweetheart. Every time you use new
Lady stache off with triple beauty action™, you’ are contributing to our
ecoonomy, our way of life. Don’t you want to be a contributor to our economy?
Don’t you want to make sure we can have bikinis, cable, and porn? What are you,
a communist?...However, it has come to our attention that there is a small
safety “glitch” with the Git R Done 447, which might cause it too fire too soon
or even randomly, accidentally killing someone you love. Awkward, we know.
That’s why we are issuing a voluntary recall of the Git R Done 447 Personal
Safety® handgun. Issuing this voluntary recall shows how much we care, and it
is hard to dislike or take legal action against those who really care.